Changeable art gallery taking shape downtown

Published: Tuesday, January 8, 2013 at 05:50 PM.

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Butler said they received a recent phone call from someone in St. Louis who read a Gazette article about their plans and wanted advice on how they planned to pull it off.

“In terms of this type of construction and the idea we had to begin with, it’s never been done before,” he said. “We wanted this to have a visual impact and to be unique enough that people would say, ‘Here’s something really different that’s not going on anywhere else.”

You can reach Michael Barrett at 704-869-1826 or twitter.com/GazetteMike.

The ragged, multicolored wall overlooking Center City Park in downtown Gastonia is already overflowing with character.

This week, components are being assembled to install a changeable art gallery on the facade. And the project visionaries expect it to not only spread more creativity to passers-by, but also help the historic business district stand out as a haven for imaginative expression.

Even as the unique concept takes shape, it’s still a work in progress, said architect Allison Pell, who owns the building and helped to conceive the idea.

“It’s not like building a house where we’ve done it before,” he said Tuesday. “I mean, who’s done this before?”

Pell owns the two-story, 113-year-old Merit building at 167 W. Main Ave., where his architecture firm, The Bara Process, is located. He also rents space there to Butler Studio and Fine Art Gallery, owned by Curt Butler.

In 2008, the city tore down three dilapidated structures beside the Merit building, and filled the gap with a temporary commons that has morphed into the more permanent park. The demolition left the east side of Pell’s building exposed, with a multi-colored medley of brick that has since become a popular backdrop for portrait photographers.

Last May, Pell and Butler came up with a way to build on the wall’s appeal. The plan is to mount a system of panels on which murals and other artwork can be put on display, and changed out regularly to give onlookers something new to appreciate every few months.

Gastonia City Council members granted an easement for the project last summer, and Pell and Butler have since been working to make the idea come to life. On Monday, after months of planning, the hardware they ordered started to arrive.

The project is costing no city dollars, as Pell and Butler are securing sponsors for the venture.

Five moveable, metal panels will be installed later this week that can be lowered and raised to about 10 feet off the ground. Plans to use electric hoists were shelved in favor of using a water-based system for the counterweights, Pell said.

“He was going to sell me five electric hoists,” Pell said of the metal fabricator who helped him work out the details. “But he talked me into buying a garden hose.”

Lithographs or weather-resistant reproductions of original artwork will be displayed on the panels and changed out every so often. Details of how that art will be selected are still being ironed out.

But the galvanized metal panels will look aesthetically pleasing by themselves, even when no art is displayed, Pell said. They feature utilitarian patterns that play off the layers that are visible in the brick wall, among other things.

“I’d describe it as metamorphic,” said Pell. “We’ve got four different patterns in each metal panel.”

Butler said they received a recent phone call from someone in St. Louis who read a Gazette article about their plans and wanted advice on how they planned to pull it off.

“In terms of this type of construction and the idea we had to begin with, it’s never been done before,” he said. “We wanted this to have a visual impact and to be unique enough that people would say, ‘Here’s something really different that’s not going on anywhere else.”

You can reach Michael Barrett at 704-869-1826 or twitter.com/GazetteMike.